The River Woods condenser that hasn't cycled off since the Fourth of July

The sound that started it

The house in River Woods was built in the late 1990s and the air conditioner came with it. By this past July the owners had stopped hearing the outdoor unit the way you stop hearing a refrigerator. Then a neighbor mentioned that it had been running every time he walked past, mid-morning to after dark, and they started listening. It never cycled. The thermostat sat at 78 all afternoon with the setpoint at 75, the supply air was cool but never cold, and the August FPL bill was the highest they had seen.

A technician found a system twenty-six summers old, low on charge from a coil leak, moving half the air it should through flex duct that had sagged into the attic insulation. Repairing it would have meant a coil, a recharge and a duct job on equipment at the end of its life. They replaced it. This page is what that decision involves.

What a new air conditioner will not do

Replacement gets sold as a cure for everything, and it is not. Before anyone prices equipment, be clear about what a new unit cannot fix.

• It will not cool a room the duct does not reach. A bedroom at the end of a crushed run stays warm with any equipment on the other end.
• It will not lower the bill if the attic is leaking conditioned air into the sky. Duct sealing and attic insulation do that; the equipment only makes the loss cheaper per hour.
• It will not dry the house if it is oversized. A system that satisfies the thermostat in eight minutes never runs long enough to wring out a 72-degree dew point. Bigger is worse here.
• It will not survive bad power. Generator-fed houses after an Idalia-scale outage need a surge protector and a soft-start, or the new compressor meets the same fate as the old one.
• It will not fix a package unit’s crawlspace. On a manufactured home, the belly duct is half the system. A new unit over a torn duct is money spent on the wrong half.

What a correct installation does for this county

Done right, a replacement is three jobs: the equipment, the air path and the controls, matched to a house that faces a hotter, breezeless summer than the coast and a winter with a few hard freezes.

The equipment is sized from a load calculation, not the old nameplate. Cook’s installs Lennox and backs it as a dealer; a matched condenser, coil and air handler are selected together so the efficiency rating on the paper is the efficiency the house gets. For FPL customers inside Live Oak, Wellborn and Houston, a system at SEER2 15.2 or above can qualify for the utility’s A/C rebate, which pays through contractors enrolled in FPL’s program; ask where Cook’s enrollment stands. [[CONFIRM WITH JERRY]] SVEC members in the countryside do not have a cash rebate on cooling equipment as far as the co-op has published; we check at the time of the quote.

The air path is tested and corrected. Static pressure, return size, supply leakage. The controls are a thermostat that knows what equipment it is driving, with humidity control if the system has it.

Get a free replacement estimate

From the load calculation to the final charge: the install sequence

1. Estimate visit. Load calculation room by room, duct inspection, a look at the electrical panel and the condensate route, and a written quote that covers everything, including the duct work, with nothing added later. The estimate is free.
2. Scheduling. Crews drive up from the Palm Coast headquarters, so installs are grouped onto Suwannee County days. Most residential changeouts finish the same day they start.
3. Protect and disconnect. Floor coverings in, power off at both breakers, refrigerant recovered from the old system into a cylinder.
4. Removal. The old condenser, coil and air handler come out. Any duct being replaced comes out with them.
5. Set the new equipment. Pad leveled, condenser set, air handler or furnace-and-coil set on a platform or stand that keeps it above any water, float switch on the drain.
6. Line set and brazing. New line set where the old one is undersized or corroded, brazed with nitrogen flowing to keep the inside clean.
7. Evacuate and charge. Vacuum pulled to a measured micron level and held, then charged by weight and verified by subcooling, not by feel.
8. Electrical and controls. Whip, disconnect, surge protection where requested, thermostat configured for the exact equipment.
9. Commission. Temperature split, static pressure, amp draws and the full first cycle, all recorded on a start-up sheet you keep. Registration of the warranty is done for you.

Getting the house ready

A little preparation makes the day shorter.

• Clear a path from the driveway to the air handler, whether that is a garage closet, a hallway closet or an attic hatch. Three feet of room around it is enough.
• Move anything you care about away from the outdoor unit and the route the crew will carry equipment along the side of the house.
• Crate or close off pets. Doors stay open most of the day.
• Know where the main water shutoff is if the air handler shares a closet with the water heater.
• If the home is a manufactured one, tell us where the crawlspace access is and whether the skirting panel near the unit comes off easily.
• On well water, let us know if the house has a softener or treatment system, since that changes how we route and treat the condensate drain.

By the end of the day in River Woods the new condenser cycled off at 3:40 in the afternoon, which the owners found strange enough to text about. That silence is the point.